Creating a website is one of the most important things to do to show you’re serious about your brand or business.
Luckily, we live in a time when you don’t need any knowledge or a significant budget to achieve that.
Not even a lot of time!
That’s what Strikingly is about, a website builder that promises users a site in minutes.
Today, we’re going to cover what this builder is, how it works, and everything you need to know.
Strikingly
Prioritizing quality over quantity. Strikingly is a website builder that lets you build a single page with multiple sections.
This Chinese company was founded in 2012 and graduated from the Y Combinator seed accelerator.
Since then, over 6 million people have used Strikingly to launch more than 12 million websites.
With such a huge user base, delivering personalized support sounds impossible.
However, Strikingly made it a New Year’s resolution to have coffee with 100 of their users. Once you create an account, you’ll receive a form to fill out and they will let you know when they’re in your town!
Moreover, since you don’t need a domain and you can use Strikingly for free, using it is really risk-free and you can simply have fun building your very own website.
Who is Strikingly For
Strikingly is for entrepreneurs, creatives and freelancers. It’s a very intuitive and focused builder that lets you create a site super quickly. And you can even do it for free.
If you don’t want to deal with some of the complexities of WordPress or even Squarespace, Strikingly is the one for you.
You’ll get a simple yet very complete interface. Among some of its most recent updates, you’ll find that now Strikingly supports rich snippets when your site appears in Google Search results.
So your website is always optimized for search engines (SEO).
Key features
Powerful ecommerce
- Sell both physical and digital goods.
- Accept payments in any currency via Stripe, PayPal, Square or offline payments.
- Offer coupons.
- Display customer reviews.
- Membership sites: let old customers access exclusive content.
Email marketing suite
- Schedule and automatically send email newsletters.
- Set automation triggers.
- Receive emails at your own address (like [email protected]).
Security
- Site forms protected with invisible reCAPTCHA
- HTTPS Built-in.
Languages
You can auto-translate your site content to create a multilingual experience for your site visitors quickly.
Besides, the website is available in 15 different languages including Italian, Norwegian, Romanian, and Czech. So not only can your visitors access your content in different languages, but also anyone can create a website with no problems, even if they don’t speak English.
More Features
- Strikingly stock image library and more than 100 templates.
- Real-time site analytics: see your traffic sources, what countries or regions your visitors live, what device they use to access your site, and more.
- Free custom domain with the yearly plan.
- Collaboration tools. Invite team members to simultaneously edit the site with you.
- Version history. You can restore a previous version of your entire site from the last 20 published versions.
- Simple blog: add a blog section to your Strikingly site and share your stories.
- Audience plan: an add-on that unlocks live chat for your site and lets you send newsletters to a wider audience.
- Mobile app for iOS and Android.
Help and support
Strikingly has a knowledge base apart from a customer support chat available 24/7. You can start a chat from your dashboard or while you edit your website.
It also has a Youtube channel with several videos. However, it’s not updated and the last videos are from 2016.
Pricing
Strikingly has a completely free tier, which you access when you sign up on the main page. However, if you’re interested in accessing their premium features, you can choose between three paid tiers.
Here’re all its options:
- Free: includes unlimited sites, a Strikingly domain and 5 GB of monthly bandwidth.
- Limited: $8 per month if billed annually. Comes with 50 GB of monthly bandwidth and lets you sell up to 5 products.
- Pro: $11.20 per month. Embed custom code, add up to 100 pages to a single site, create a members-only section and more!
- VIP: $34.30 per month. Create multilingual versions of your site, add live chat and have a dedicated account manager. This plan also lets you sell unlimited products.
All paid tiers come with a 14-day free trial. Plus, they have several billing options: monthly, annually, every two years, for three years, or five.
And keep in mind Strikingly offers new users a “Welcome Sale” with a 30% discount if they purchase Pro yearly.
How to use Strikingly
First steps
- Strikingly makes it all very straightforward from the beginning. As soon as you land on Strikingly’s website, you’ll see a form to create an account. Simply fill in your email, name and create a password. Or sign in with Facebook if you prefer.
- Once you create an account, you can immediately start building your website or go to your dashboard, which will look something like this:
3. To start creating a site, select a template.
The list of Strikingly templates is quite long, but you can filter it for your own needs. I went with “Creative”, which is great for showing off your work and projects, whether you’re an agency or artist.
4. If you’re not sure which template to choose, click “View Example” to see how your website would look. Once you’ve decided, select “Start editing” in the upper right corner.
5. Now you’ll see this pop-up. To let Strikingly guide you through the process, click “Take the tour”.
As you can see, Strikingly gives you a very complete tour so you don’t have to start guessing what does what. And if it all seems too obvious to you, you can always click “Exit” to skip it.
Site configuration
- Go to Settings to configure your domain name. In the free version, you can only enter a MyStrikingly.com URL. If you desire to have your own domain, click “Register a New Domain” and upgrade your plan.
7. Visit the “Basic information” tab to add a site description, upload a social share image and other important details. This is also the place where you’ll configure the language.
8. If you aren’t on your own and want to join people at the party, click “Team” on the left side of your screen, below “Settings”.
You can give your team members different roles. Then add their email to send the invitation and you’re done.
- After you finish configuring your desktop site, you’ll find the option to preview your site on the lower left. You can also click on the desktop icon to switch versions and see the mobile view.
As it is a very intuitive drag-and-drop builder, you don’t actually need to click “Preview your site” to see how it will look. That’s because you’re seeing the results while you make the changes.
10. When you’re finally ready, there’s only one thing left to do: go live. To do that, simply click “Publish”. Strikingly will ask you to choose your URL and site’s title if you haven’t done it yet.
Then click “Publish now”. If you ‘ve finished the configuration, there’ll be no problem. If you haven’t finished the set-up, Strikingly will warn you about it and you can do it then or publish anyway.
More things are coming
Early this month, Strikingly released a Bookings section so you can start taking appointments directly from your site.
The feature is super new, and isn’t available yet to all users, but if you want an early activation, you can email support.
Moreover, they’re open to ideas and suggestions, so if you have any, you can head to this form.
Pros and cons of Strikingly
Pros
- Super intuitive interface. It’s very user-friendly and, as promised, you can create a site in no time.
- Free plan and affordable prices.
- Beautiful themes and templates you can easily swap out.
- Great customer support.
Cons
- Not every plan comes with a multi-page feature.
- Multilingual content is only available in Pro and upper tiers.
- Tutorials aren’t up to date.
Conclusion
So there you have it.
All you need to know about Strikingly, from its features and pricing to how it works and who it is for.
I think it’s safe to say Strikingly is a very good option for all the people out there that want a quick and easy-to-use website without sacrificing quality.
Strikingly will allow you to build the perfect site for you and your visitors while accessing cool features such as their ecommerce tools and multilingual content.
What do you think about Strikingly?
Have you used it yet?
Tell us in the comments!
I’ve been liking Strikingly a lot lately. I find it very attractive, although they still have to work on functions that other creators improve.
I agree! I’m glad to read it works for you though!